Covalent Brings Apache to the FTP Playing Field

Covalent Technologies Tuesday revealed it will be bringing its Web server and Apache experience into the FTP space with the release of Covalent FTP Server.

Covalent Technologies Tuesday revealed it will be bringing its Web server and Apache experience into the FTP space with the release of Covalent FTP Server.

Available as an add-on to Enterprise Ready Server and based on Apache 2.0, Covalent FTP was designed to deliver a higher level of security while offering easier integration and better performance than other standard FTP servers.

According to the vendor, Covalent FTP is a robust, FTP server built for enterprise-level deployment. Its chief benefit is the capability to enable companies to conduct encrypted transactions, thus ensuring the highest level of security.

Covalent FTP does this by leveraging the advanced capabilities of the Apache 2.0 module architecture also found in Covalent's Enterprise Ready Server. Because it follows this model, content serving protocols are "plugged into" Apache's core processing and share infrastructure components. Multiple protocols (FTP, secure FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS) can be delivered from the same Apache instance while sharing authentication, authorization, logging, and programming API modules.

Covalent FTP also uses the Apache 2.0 framework to leverage secure authorization, digital certificates (X.509), and SSL/TLS encryption security. It secures the file transfer over the data connection using SSL security that uses Covalent SSL. The FTP server also integrates with the major FTP clients that support plain text FTP and FTP over SSL (e.g., CuteFTP and WSFTP Pro).

Covalent FTP also uses Apache 2.0's advanced processing architecture to enable administrators to run the FTP process in a pre-forked or threaded mode. Performance can be fine-tuned for the specific implementation using standard Apache syntax. Both the pre-forked and threaded processing options serve connections from a pool of workers, which results in better performance than servers that start the FTP process from "inetd." or FTP servers that spawn a process for each incoming request, Covalent said.

In addition, because Covalent FTP is an Apache-based server, it has Apache's scaling and stability capabilities and can transmit large files or handle numerous file requests.

Covalent FTP Server is available for purchase on Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and Windows with immediate shipping. It is sold as an add-on to Enterprise Ready Server.

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